Innovation from Quarantine: Challenging Times for Our Most Creative Work

Undoubtedly for everyone, COVID-19 hit at an inconvenient time. We were all working on our strategies and plans, and suddenly everything changed. We adapted and refocused our efforts on core and critical activities. For many of us, “nice to have” programs got put on hold or cancelled outright.

In this article, I’d like to share a brief story about an important program that we rescued from the ashes.

Innovation must go on

For the past four years, my team sponsored and organized a company-wide innovation event that we call Invent. A few years ago, I wrote an article about our innovation program. If you’d like some background on how we do it, please read it, then come back here. In the months of January and February, we geared up planning and communications.

Then finally, on Friday, March 13th, we released our promotions for our in-person and live-streamed kick-off events based in our corporate auditorium. For those of you involved in COVID-19 planning in the Midwest, you will recall that date as the day everything changed.

Shortly afterward, the Invent kick-off was canceled, and I gave the planning team some time to regroup. I’m particularly impressed with the passion and resolve of the team. The resounding response I kept hearing was “innovation must go on!” The team was committed to finding a way forward.

Priorities

At work and at home, COVID-19 made us focus on what is really important. We’re all stressed and stretched thin. We have time and energy for only the most important priorities. In our company, we’re making great progress on developing a culture of innovation.

On one hand, if there was ever a time that we could justify canceling an optional innovation program, this is the time. On the other hand, if there was ever a time that we need to foster the adaptability, creativity, and innovation of our teams, that time was now. Both lines of thinking are valid, but the latter prevailed, and I couldn’t be more proud.

Innovation online

Both the planning teams and the potential participants needed some time to regroup and adjust to our new remote work-life. Then, we relaunched the Invent kick-off as a 100% online program. We held our live online kick-off events last week and this week with fantastic participation.

Innovation online is different than in-person. Not everyone is comfortable with it. It’s not like we can all get in a conference room and hash things out on a whiteboard. We can’t put a bunch of sticky notes on the wall and move them around for brainstorming. Fortunately, there are virtual equivalents of all of these, but there’s a learning curve.

I applaud everyone who takes the initiative to not only do their baseline job online, but to go above and beyond to innovate, collaborate, strategize, and use their creativity in these remote work conditions.

Innovation is collaboration

Invent at CHS started off as an IT only program. We set aside time for our engineers to work on passion projects of their choosing alongside their colleagues on self-organized teams. Within the last year or two, our business groups started taking notice and wanted to get involved. This year, we have as much business participation as IT participation, and this is great to see.

I’m a believer. Magic happens when business professionals and technologists get together. We have plenty of traditional methods to make that happen day-to-day. Invent is our new way to make that happen in non-traditional ways. Now that we are online, this collaboration is even more non-traditional than ever before.

How about you?

Yes, most of us are getting our jobs done online. Many of us are working harder than ever before because of the demands of the times. How many of us are doing the extra work to be creative, strategic, and innovative under these challenging conditions? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

Read this article on my blog site or listen to it on my podcast???

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